A total of 650,000 civilian employees are now being furloughed at U.S. military bases in response to sequester cuts — but the Department of Defense is still spending millions to protect fuzzy critters.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) in Washington state just received a $3.5 million department grant to purchase land around the base in an effort to protect the Mazama pocket gopher, a species that has not even been listed as endangered or threatened.

The expense is not sitting well with furloughed workers.

“That really makes me mad that they would do that,” said Matt Hines, one of 10,000 civilian employees forced to take a 20 percent pay cut. “I’m all for saving animals, but at what cost?”

Under REPI (Readiness and Environmental Protection Initiative), the Department of Defense and other federal agencies have spent $397 million to protect 264,000 acres around bases since 2003.

If you want to understand why we’re so deep in the hole, look at that figure. That’s nearly 400 million in in environmental spending pipelined through the Defense Department. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in the leftist Deep State.

Part of the administration’s aggressive green initiative is to transform the way the military gets its power in the name of reducing global warming. More than $335 million in stimulus money has been allocated for renewable power projects at military bases, according to Pentagon figures quoted in a Virginia newspaper this week.

There’s a war underway over the future of biofuels for the U.S. military. Republicans are targeting Navy Secretary Ray Mabus’ plans for the creation of a “great green fleet” that would power ships and planes with biofuels, and where military bases would generate half their power using renewable energy rather than conventional, fossil-fuel powered electricity. Both the U.S. House and the Senate Armed Services committee passed legislation that would halt the green fleet. The bills are probably dead on arrival in the White House, though they shouldn’t be.

As the generally hawkish John McCain noted, “In a tough budget climate for the Defense Department, we need every dollar to protect our troops on the battlefield with energy technologies that reduce fuel demand and save lives…Spending $26 per gallon of biofuel is not consistent with that goal.”